Comments

Ollycity Guest

Aug 18, 2009, 2:54pm

They did pretty well with the DS Hardware. I'm impressed.

Is it just me, or does limited hardware and huge sales = innovation?

Because on the DS you've got Scribblenauts, Nintendogs and a whole lot of games that actually use the touch screen and microphone well, whereas in other systems that are stronger graphically, you get the same old games over and over.

Personally i think that trying to do the same old thing on a DS is doomed to fail, and that they should just leave it to quirker, more imaginative games.

Agree on the looks of what they are going to squeeze from my poor little DSi. Still, reminds me quite a lot Metroid Hunters, but without the varied colours that helped me determine what was what.

I would have to disagree about the limited hardware being what allows a lot more of these games to come out. I think it's more the relative cheap development costs (caused by the limited hardware maybe?). I was under the impression a DS game can be completed for less than 100k USD, which is a far removed from the 150 million that GTA4 apparently commanded.

The same goes here for DLC and other games on XBLA/VC. I think 2009 has really been a good year for games in general. With lots of smaller, lower budget, independent stuff to fill in the gaps between CoD:Modern Warfare 1 and 2.

I personally think that limited hardware (and by extension cheap development costs as Phil mentioned) + huge sales = lots of shovelware. I can't walk through the Wii section without being accosted by shovel-loads of crap games (department stores are especially guilty of this). The Xbox has some shovelware, but nowhere near the depths of the Wii and DS.

You are right in that the Wii and DS have some truly innovative games, but to me those innovations come from the innovation of the platforms they are on rather than the design of the game. Perhaps I'd prefer to call them inspired use of the platforms' innovations.

Innovations are of course hard to define, but I'd like to point to a small list of games as what I consider to be rather innovative (and not because they make use of new technology, but are in themselves new ideas using old technology) (feel free to add more): Braid's limitless time reversal and other time mechanics, Gears of War's cover mechanics, GTA's sandbox nature, Halo perhaps (somewhere along the way it made console shooters possible, but also I like the way it balances guns, grenades and melee, making them all viable in most circumstances).

As for your last comment I very much agree with you though would extend it to say doing what everyone else is doing on a system that can't do the same things is not the way to go; Call of Duty on DS looks terrible. Same reason Conduit wasn't received so well.

Story time! I went to an all-girls’ school. My friends and I had that special bond of closeness that apparently comes with synced-up periods and measuring the length of each other’s winter leg hair.
This, obviously, led to a brief era of trying to catch one of the others unawares with the most impressive, most unexpected spank possible. We’re talking sneaking up behind each other in the hallway and laying one down that made the earth shake. If I couldn’t read your palm from the imprint, you weren’t doing a good enough job.